There are a wide variety of ways to form integrated circuits. One conventional approach involves forming various devices and interconnects on a slice of semiconductor material. These operations form multiple copies of the same integrated circuit design 105 on a single semiconductor wafer 101 separated by saw streets.
Referring to FIG. 1, the semiconductor wafer 101 is then diced or sawed to separate the integrated circuits using a sawing machine (not shown).
The sawing machine (not shown) is comprised of a saw blade 102, a motor (not shown) driving the saw blade 102 and a chuck table 103 that moves back and forth under saw blade to make linear cuts along the saw streets of a wafer.
A wafer is mounted on the chuck table 103 with dicing tape 104 therebetween.
During a cutting operation, the sawing blade spins at high speeds and the chuck table 103 moves the wafer 101 and its underlying layers towards the sawing blade 102. The sawing blade 102 then proceeds to cut through the wafer 101. The sawing blade 102 also cuts into but not entirely through the dicing tape 104, so that the dicing tape can help hold the dice together during the cutting operation. This process is repeated multiple times to cut the wafer 101 along the saw streets.
Once all of the cutting operations are completed, each die is lifted off of the dicing tape 104 and positioned onto a suitable substrate or lead frame (not shown). The die is adhered to its underlying substrate. In some implementations, the die is then electrically connected to the substrate and encapsulated in molding material to form an integrated circuit package.
Existing arrangements and methods for dicing semiconductor wafers exhibit backside damage and flying die for small die. There are continuing efforts to further improve the effectiveness of such techniques.